Los Angeles daily herald., 1887-10-08
FRENCH LIFE.
The French Home and French
Sentiment of the Present Day.

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The French community is destitute
of many sentimental influences which
are very potent with us. The house,
for instance, in England and among
ourselves, is nursery of sentiment to
8 degree which it certainly is not in
France-right as the French are in re-
senting our absurd misconception of
their home-life. Mother and chill
dren are not, in France,
brought into such sympathetic
and sentimental relations. The
reciprocal affection is, of course, just
as sure and puissant, but it's sinews
are rational. She does not efface her
self 80 much, and aspire to live only
in them. They are educationally and
otherwise occupied instead of develop
ing emotional precocity. There are no
long readings winter evenings, and
none of that intimate companionship
so often productive of what, physiolog-
ically speaking, has been SO aptly
termed emotional prodigality."
Our society is in a considerable
measure leavened by young men
who, chiefly through this prodigality,
have at one time or another contem-
plated ent ring the ministry and have
abandoned the notion only after the
in1Omentous struggle which leaves
traces on the sensibility. French
youth do not know what solitude is /;
their only "communings" are commu-
nication. They naturally have less
aptitude for TIE spiritual side of life
than for its sensual and rational sides
the tendency to materialism is never
far from the surface.
g., In fine, when the French enter the
realm OF sentiment they do not seem
quite at home. They are in danger OF
becoming either fantastic or conven-
tional. lies deux tours de Notre
Dame sont lie H de Hugo" exclaimed
one day Auguste Vacquerie to Jules
'Caretie, and Claretie chronicles the
remark as an impressive one. Similar
extravagances pass muster in the
sphere OF art, though only where senti-
ment is concerned. On the other
hand, though nowhere is beauty
admired more fanatically-adored
more abjectly, one may almost
say-the idea of it is often
conventional enough. Expression
sentiment, do not count for 30 much
as regularity. LIE charnae prime la
beautc is a French adage, but what
constitute charm is the real question.
As the vocabularies disclose, a single
French word answers to beautiful,
fine, handsome" Somestimes beauty
is mere chit, cachet sty le, order and
movement in carriage. That at any
rate is, as a matter of fact, the great
Parisian substitute for beauty, and
has doubtless become SO by natures
selection. Accordingly, for the mos
part they continue their activities tc
the sphere of the intelligence, where
they are never fantastic ant
rarely prefunctory and they find
no difficulty whatever in doing this
because the atmosphere Of the intelli
gence is their natural element. Notice
for example, the diction of French ac-
tion. 1t is the sense and not the sen
timent of the verse of prose that is
savored by the actor and the audi
ence. The voice never caresses the
emotion evoked by the significance ol
the lines beyond the point needful fol
complete expression. The personal
feeling by which such an actor as Sal
vim infuses warmth and glow into his
most artistic impersonations the
boards of the COmedie Francaise
never witness. 1t is an impersonal.
that is to say, purely intellectual en-
joyment that one obtains from the
delicious voice and admirable action
{ of Nine. Sarah Bernhardt, when she
is at her best, when she is most con-
tained, when she appeals most strongly
to the Partisan. There is absolutely
no sentiment whatever in that quintes-
aeace of the exquisite which has made
Nine. Judic the most popular actress
of Paris. An American, or English
man, and should suppose, q
forti0ri, a German, is infallibly much
impressed in his early stages of
French theater-going at the absence
of intensity in the love passages; the
absence of all that kissing, clasping,
enfolding, rushing together, gazing
into the depths Of each others eyes
in fine, all that effort to enact the un-
utterable which is so characteristic Of
our stage as to have become thorough
Iy perfunctory. That this sort of thing
does not exist on the French stage is
partly due, to be sure, to a nicer sense
Of propriety, which dictates the limits
of what is fit subject for artistic repre-
sentation; but mainly it is to be as
cribed to the predominance OF good
sense over sentiment in the French
appetite. II -fScribner's Monthly.